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Republicans Should Embrace the Tea Party

The tea party is not an enemy of, nor is it officially aligned with, the Republican Party. Yet while it includes libertarians, conservative Democrats, and independents, the tea party generally espouses positions such as smaller government, lower taxes, fiscal restraint, balanced budgets, free enterprise, property rights and a deep hatred of Big Brother-style over-regulation. All these are strongly held views that course through the veins of Republicans and tea party patriots alike. Now, with the shocking defeat of House Republican Majority Leader Eric Cantor and the possible victory of tea party favorite Chris McDaniel in Mississippi, it is especially important to ask: Why such hostility?

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I fully get it why the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, a traditional Republican Party ally, has chosen to support what it considers to be “more practicable” pro-business candidates over tea party-backed candidates who might fare poorly in a general election. The chamber’s members, after all, are results-oriented businessmen.

But the Chamber shares the same frustrations as the tea party: that our government has become more and more dysfunctional and less protective of our constitutional rights, more interested in redistributing America’s wealth than in enlarging our free-enterprise capacity to create more. Both desperately seek elected officials who can end our national decline and move us back on a track to growth and prosperity.

Why not identify one, or perhaps two, central tenets of the common beliefs shared by both factions and encourage them to join forces to achieve them?

I have two candidates in mind.

First, while most believe the tea party suddenly emerged in or about 2007, the truth is that the grass-roots seeds of tea party activity were planted in 1997 with a series of debates sponsored by Citizens for a Sound Economy (a conservative group that later evolved into FreedomWorks). Those debates, called Scrap the Code, were held in 40 cities across the country and featured Dick Armey, then the House majority leader, and me — Armey arguing for the flat tax as a substitute for the current income tax system and me arguing for a national retail sales tax.

I began that debate tour with a visit, along with four other congressmen, to Boston Harbor on Tax Day, April 15, 1997. From the replica of the original tea ship, the Beaver, we tossed overboard a chest loaded with all 1,100 pages of our hated income Tax Code. (The code is even longer today, if you can believe it.) Before huge crowds across the United States, I ended each debate with the story of the original tea party patriots, and a call for a new American tea party. Then, in 1998, I published a book in support of scrapping the Tax Code and calling for tea party groups across the country to organize behind the effort.

So, my first candidate for a new, unified Republican-tea party campaign is the same issue that initially spawned the tea party and that also helped characterize President Ronald Reagan’s successful pro-growth agenda: tax simplification. Maybe it’s time for a new national Scrap the Code effort. Republicans and the tea party should sponsor that effort together, especially now, with so much evidence of IRS misdeeds.

Another issue that can unite conservatives is one that highly energizes both big and small business alike, along with everyone who cherishes the free market and private property: over-regulation, which strangles business and job creation and robs citizens of property rights and property value without the just compensation promised in the Fifth Amendment.

It’s time for a national Republican-tea party tour, highlighting the damage that Big Brother-style over-regulation does to our lives, citing real-life examples and debating the best approach to getting government back in its box and allowing free enterprise to flourish.

I’ve offered just two ideas; there could be other great candidates for joint Republican and tea party efforts, and that is precisely my point. There is too much to unite them. They share too many common opponents. There is no need for this hostility. The best way to end it is to agree to do something together that would be broadly recognized as great for our country.

Billy Tauzin is a former member of Congress who represented the 3rd District of Louisiana from 1980 to 2005. Following his departure from Congress, Mr. Tauzin served as president and CEO of the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA). He currently represents a broad range of clients at Tauzin Consultants, a government relations firm and business accelerator he co-founded in 2010.